and it's at that point when boehner says to the president, "hey, you know, on this debt ceiling stuff, we ought to do something big." >> narrator: on and off for weeks, obama and boehner met in secret. >> boehner calls these "the nicorettes and merlot sessions." the president is having iced tea and chewing a nicorette. and boehner is having a glass of merlot red wine and smoking a cigarette. >> narrator: it was obama's dream negotiation. a bipartisan deal. >> if the speaker and the president could come to a deal, and they both, as we used to say, hold hands and kind of jump off the ledge together, then they could not ram through, but they surely, with the strength of their positions, would have a very good chance to sell them the package. >> narrator:he psident offered entitlement cuts. the speaker offered increased revenue from taxes. with less than two weeks to go, they thought they had a deal. it became known as the grand bargain. >> it's not every day that the speaker comes to see the president quietly and says, "i'm willing to do a deal" that everybody knows is going to be danger